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The Tree Project: Lorna Watson & Lynne Craig
103 Plays10 months ago
Lorna Watson is the founder of STELAR, a purpose-led brand focussed on the principles of community, craftsmanship, transparency and regeneration. Born and established in Bali, STELAR collaborates with local artisan communities to create luxury handcrafted bags and accessories that preserve high-level heritage weaving skills. Their mission is to build a modern luxury brand, that continues to set new industry standards of traceability by bringing value to the people and skills behind each item they create, not only the item itself.
Lynne Craig’s practice connects design, technology, education, and business development; exploring the frontiers of emergent technologies and cultural change. Throughout her career she has built businesses, created products, designed systems for global audiences, and continues to reimagine what the role of ‘making’ in design, education and business looks like for tomorrow. She has recently been interviewed for the New York Times, exploring futures in jewellery, and has created celebrated immersive retail experiences globally for premium international brands across fashion, beauty and luxury sectors, including De Beers, Louis Vuitton, Uniqlo and Dunhill.
During her time as Head of Jewellery & Silversmithing at Edinburgh College of Art, renowned jeweller and educator Dorothy Hogg MBE inspired students in the workshop and beyond. For more information on Dorothy Hogg, the project and participants, visit: www.scottishgoldsmithstrust.org/tree-project.
Hosted by Ebba Goring
Edited & Produced by Eda Obermanns
Cover Image by Shannon Tofts
Music: Precious Memories by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast Series and Dorothy Hogg's Legacy
00:00:03
Speaker
Hello and welcome to The Tree Project, Dorothy Hogg Life and Legacy podcast series. I'm Eva Goering from the Scottish Goldsmiths Trust. This podcast series has been developed to highlight the impact and legacy of the late Dorothy Hogg MBE and her influential time leading the jewellery and silversmithing department at Edinburgh College of Art. Participants in this project were selected by Dorothy
00:00:28
Speaker
alongside her friend curator Amanda Gain. For more information on this project and all those involved head over to our website www.scottishgoldsmithstrust.org.
Backgrounds and Roles of Lynn Craig and Lorna Watson
00:00:43
Speaker
In this episode I'm joined by Lynn Craig and Lorna Watson. Thanks both of you for joining us. Let's start with introductions when you are studying at ECA and what it is that you do now. I'm Lorna Watson
00:00:57
Speaker
I graduated from Edinburgh in 1989, and then I went on to do a postgraduate in 1990. I am the founder of a purpose-led business called Stellar that's focused around regenerating heritage craftsmanship skills in artisan communities. Most of it is based in and around Bali and Indonesia, because that's where I live now.
00:01:25
Speaker
I am Lynn Craig, previously Lynn Murray with Dorothy at ECA. I studied at ECA from 1999 to 2003. I design the conditions to spark change. I'm driven by the possibilities really of what comes next. My practice currently connects education, design, technology, business development, looking at the frontiers of emerging technologies and cultural change.
00:01:53
Speaker
Currently, I am leading innovation for Edinburgh Futures Institute as part of University of Edinburgh. I'm programme director of Design Informatics at the University. And I'm also co-founder and non-executive director of Halition Augmented Retail, a company I founded soon after graduation from the Royal College in London. So what made you choose to study at ECA and what do you remember from your time there?
Motivations for Studying at ECA
00:02:22
Speaker
and in particular your relationship with Dorothy. Why did I go to Edinburgh? I went to Edinburgh because it wasn't Glasgow. I grew up in Glasgow but I wanted a change and Edinburgh had a very good reputation at the time. I really liked the multidisciplinary first year that you could do anything and everything and that's what really attracted me to ECA particularly.
00:02:47
Speaker
I kind of think I probably always wanted to be a painter, but actually when I got to ECA I realised I wanted a trade, I wanted a skill and I wanted something that I could develop as a career and the jewellery department seemed to be a really nice hybrid between
00:03:05
Speaker
I'll use a Dorothy word, wacky creativity, and something that was slightly more purposefully framed in a making environment. I'd also always made jewellery. I made Christmas presents in Fimo for my whole family, I think, when I was nine or ten.
00:03:23
Speaker
I set up young enterprise at my school and we kind of made jewellery like things. So it felt like a really good place to be for that special time. We were in and at the bench and in the studio every single day. In fact, I think we even had evening classes in life drawing, maybe even twice a week. So we were there all the time. I don't really remember a time when we weren't in the workshop considering jewellery
00:03:53
Speaker
drawing, jewellery, practicing, making. That was a real privilege of education at the time that we had our own bench, we had our own space, we had an amazing team of technicians to support and help brilliant roster of
00:04:10
Speaker
visiting lecturers, academics with new ideas. Stone setting was a particular highlight because I'm terrible at stone setting. And the person that came to deliver stone setting classes was very confused with the way in which I wanted to set something. But I just remember constantly and doggedly
00:04:32
Speaker
trying to learn making things. That was the same for all of my student colleagues and dear friends within that small cohort. That is an experience that is very hard to identify in current education systems and I think it was a really magical and privileged time.
Multidisciplinary Foundation and Innovation at ECA
00:04:53
Speaker
Actually quite similar, I'm a west coast girl, grew up in Ayrshire, so there was an element of it that was rebellious because you didn't move from west to east or east to west. So the rebel in me, that was partial influence, but similarly I was really drawn to the multidisciplinary foundation for
00:05:14
Speaker
I actually was pretty sure I wanted to do something in textiles and fashion. I wasn't exactly sure. So that was what drew me to Edinburgh for that year, for the foundation year. And very quickly, I realized that I just loved working in a multidimensional way.
00:05:34
Speaker
So I moved very quickly on from textiles. I experimented with weaving, with printmaking. But actually, it was all the three-dimensional subjects that I responded best to. And Dorothy just fired my curiosity. And I was terrible technically. I always was terrible technically.
00:05:55
Speaker
even when I graduated, it was such a challenge for me to finish because I was always inspired by the next thing before I finished what I was working on. And I would just have, you know, this bench full of semi-finished samples. It was one of Dorothy's biggest frustrations, but also one of our biggest insights with me. And I just was so excited to work in three dimensions and I was
00:06:20
Speaker
constantly exploring something that I didn't have the skill, the full skills in order to accomplish it. But I would just crack on anyway and have a go. And we were really fortunate to have Hugh and Bill at the time.
00:06:36
Speaker
who just technically were incredible and were always there as a supporter and were always gently steering in the background to ensure that it wasn't a fleet fiasco. I loved the fact that we were never inhibited. We were always encouraged to just break through ideas, explore something new.
00:06:57
Speaker
multimedia was a big thing for me. I was carving bone and horn and using all sorts of inlaid materials and there were no rules and no boundaries. We were just encouraged to respond to, as you mentioned, when incredible visiting lecturers that brought just a
00:07:17
Speaker
plethora of skills and insights and technical workshops so that we just were constantly inspired and encouraged to see where that led us individually and you know when I look back now to actually run a course like that where every student is specializing in their own area in their own way and it was a deep dive for each of us it wasn't a general skills-based course at all
00:07:46
Speaker
It's absolutely extraordinary that we had that, not only the opportunity, but that we had the support to do that.
Developing a Visual Language and Career Preparation
00:07:53
Speaker
I think a bit like you Lauren, I was always operating at quite a pace and I remember
00:07:59
Speaker
The output was always prolific. You were always making stuff. You always had ideas. The sketchbooks were big and just joyful to do. I mean, that was just lovely time to think and work in book formats. And that was really also encouraged the practice of making books. As a jewellery department, that was quite a radical prospect. It really spoke to ideas on narrative and developing that individual
00:08:27
Speaker
aspect to the practice and I think Dorothy was really really good at doing that and perhaps kindly tempering my
00:08:35
Speaker
want to do lots of things but to maybe think about it in slightly different ways and it does take time to find what that material is that you want to work with or what it is that you want to say with what you're doing and I think Dorothy and Sue and the rest of the department really helped to focus some of those unwieldy energy towards multiple making things into spaces that actually became precious
00:09:04
Speaker
but became precious in their own language. And I guess I still embody that kind of ethos today, you know, I'm developing and standing up strategies of innovation in Edinburgh Futures Institute and we're still looking at exactly that same process of innovation and investigation in its breadth to begin with and then bringing that into a focus that is able to be communicated and understood and translated
00:09:32
Speaker
And that is a really hard thing to learn. And I think learning that through material was a really positive thing, certainly within the department. And that sense that nothing was wrong, there was no
00:09:44
Speaker
sense that any material was a bad choice or any can of worms that you'd opened up was to be forgotten. It was all part of the inquisitiveness and investigation into quite an ethnographic anthropological kind of space really in a material language that we have implicitly learned as part of her steer.
Creative Education and Industry Connection
00:10:05
Speaker
And were there any experiences or opportunities while you're at Edinburgh College of Art that you believe set you on your path for your future career?
00:10:15
Speaker
I mean, I loved this kind of fine art language or practice of making and materials that we were experimenting with, but I also, I did kind of really like that industry space. I used to love it when Lorna and Maeve and all these people would come into the department with different ways of being an industry. At my time at ECA, I don't think I really unlocked that actually, but I was aware of it and I was aware of the potential
00:10:42
Speaker
and the different ways that people could move into practice post the degree show, which was the big thing. And in a sense, it only came together for me at the degree show. And I don't think I've ever done anything like it since. You know, it was so final in a certain way as a record of that period of time. Again, significant, myself and student colleagues, we had so much work and it was all there. And I think there was something really fascinating about that. I'm basing that still with an ECA.
00:11:12
Speaker
I think there's other spaces with the way in which Dorothy's planted a few stones of direction later on. One of the strongest takeaways for me was developing a comprehensive visual language. As Lynne touched on, portfolio was so important. We were encouraged to spend
00:11:34
Speaker
a significant amount of our week on portfolio on a visual communication, a means of being able to communicate our thoughts visually. And I think that learning for me, that discipline of actually really
00:11:51
Speaker
Learning to express yourself visually is something that's carried me through on a day by day basis since then, because it's such an extraordinary tool that you can apply in so many different aspects of life and career. And I think helping you to really distill your ideas, you know, to be open to explore and investigate in a much greater context,
00:12:16
Speaker
But then to actually be able to distill that down and really start to focus on how you want to utilize those ideas. So even now, I don't necessarily have the same amount of time to work in a visual language in the way that I would actually really love to do that. But I unfortunately don't have quite as much time as I would like to do that these days. But I still have the skills that's transferable. So you have that.
00:12:43
Speaker
There's a cellular memory there that helps you to be able to communicate that in a very decisive way. And I think that was just such an extraordinary moment in time. I'm not aware of other peers who weren't at ECA who learned that skill. I think it's really extraordinary.
00:13:03
Speaker
And I think also there was a discipline there. I mean, we were at the bench at 9am and we didn't leave before 5. And normally we'd have a quick break in the club and a cheese toastie. And then we would be back in until 9 o'clock. We were allowed to be there until 9 o'clock. And most of us, if not all of us, were there Monday to Friday and we were putting those hours in.
00:13:30
Speaker
body of work that we developed, the depth of investigation and exploration was really, I think, very unique, not just for its time, but I think even historically, it was very, very unique to be working in that way. And as a result, the relationships that we developed were not just other colleagues, they were real friendships, they were lifelong friendships. And I think that's also a real testimony to
00:13:58
Speaker
Dorothy and how she ran the course. That's lovely to hear Lorna. Could you both now share with us what your career journey looked like after ECA up to where you are now?
Lynn Craig's Career Path and Innovation Journey
00:14:11
Speaker
So at ECA Dorothy encouraged me to apply for the Royal College straight after graduation and I got in but I also got an offer of a funded postgraduate place which was very appealing at the time but Dorothy had a quiet word
00:14:25
Speaker
She had a quiet word and said, Nolan, that's really nice, but I think really you should go to the Royal College. So off I went. And at the time I was making very multi-material pieces, still very experimental, very large in scale, and I was using quite a lot of plastics. And at the RCA, they said two things. They said one,
00:14:44
Speaker
Lynn, you know how to make things, which I really appreciated because I was suddenly in a group of 20, very international group, and we all came from different disciplines. But that skill of goldsmithing was embedded in my multidisciplinary material practice. And I think that's a really distinct thing. I know how to make goldsmithing things in that space.
00:15:07
Speaker
But I was very into experimenting with resins and different plastics at the time, but it was coming in at a time that that wasn't really allowed for health and safety reasons.
00:15:18
Speaker
There's a whole new way in which we needed to have bio resins or bio plastics. And my materials that I'd spent all of my student loan on were disposed of. I could not access them anymore. I couldn't find them. They'd disappeared. So this was at the beginning and I thought, well, goodness, what am I going to do for two years? And so I went to the computer rooms. Nobody else really was there apart from Gregor Anderson and the year above.
00:15:45
Speaker
And so I thought, okay, well, I've got two years. And again, going back to that kind of sense, if I want to learn a skill, I want to learn a trade. I want to learn a thing. I sat down at computers and doggedly figured out how to make computers do the things that I wanted to make. So for two years, I experimented with using kind of technology, 20 year old technology at the time, digitizer pens, I was drawing.
00:16:10
Speaker
I was trying to make three dimensional sketchbooks in space through digital technologies. I spent my two years there and ended the RCA with a degree show at the time that was only using 3D printed artifacts as final materials. And again, at the time 3D printing was very rare. The RCA had one of the machines.
00:16:34
Speaker
It was very hard to access the technology and Gregor and I and a few others in the department at the time were kind of there and pulling out these 3D printed artefacts from this alien space dust. And from my material practice, I ended up using those as the final object. So 3D printed artefacts from 2004 that were made as jewellery artefacts.
00:16:59
Speaker
and really not as a model making tool or as a tool to turn into jewellery in more precious terms. But what happened was that it was so ahead of its time in terms of its materiality and it's 3D printed nobody understood what that was.
00:17:15
Speaker
One of my favourite stories was somebody from Trustee at the V&A bought one of my pieces and promptly returned it because it dissolved when they got it wet. So I really loved this kind of relationship between technology and material practice, but it did fall down a little bit in terms of its potential.
00:17:35
Speaker
you know, at the time, it really was a potato starch brooch. It went into the rain, it dissolved, which is a different type of performance jewellery, which was not my space. So I had this kind of radical new knowledge that very, very few people had in the industry at the time. But really, because it was quite new, nobody really knew what to do with it. I didn't really know what to do with it.
00:17:58
Speaker
you know, galleries, I had some solo shows and some brilliant galleries in Holland and this kind of strange material was evolving. But I loved the technology and I loved the ability to create artifacts digitally. And then Dorothy phoned me up and she said, Lynn, there's a job and I think you should go for it. And it was with Birmingham Jewelry Industry Innovation Centre and it was to look at the future of jewellery retail.
00:18:27
Speaker
So how do we encourage people to know what a design is going to look like before it's been made? And because I had this kind of unwieldy emergent knowledge in digital technologies, that seemed to be quite a nice fit. Because I think even in Dorothy's language, whilst she wasn't fully aware of maybe where this technology was going, what it was doing, she knew that there was a journey there. And I liked that as a journey process. So I took this job and
00:18:57
Speaker
really post RCA developed technologies and experimented with technologies that ended up founding a company called Halition augmented retail. And prior to getting to launch Halition, I experimented with a whole new suite of digital technologies for the jewellery industry.
00:19:16
Speaker
particular meeting. I remember drawing the team from Birmingham City University in the jewellery industry innovation centre. Jason Holt from Holt's where the project was based, myself and a few others in a really dark room.
00:19:33
Speaker
looking at maybe a door-sized item of jewellery projected in holographic form in a performative, very emergent practice studio in the centre of London. And it was so radical. I don't think we really knew what to say to each other at the end of that meeting. We just all looked at a huge holographic 3D massive ring.
00:19:58
Speaker
that I developed in CAD, but that was kind of not the end point. The end point was this huge radical hologram. And I really wish I had a video or some memory reference of the scale of what was created there, but I don't. But that was kind of really a pivotal moment in developing what has now become halation. The next technology that I investigated as part of that was, again, something that was emergent at the time, augmented reality. Nobody knew what that was.
00:20:27
Speaker
So we developed with the first tech companies in Shoreditch, a means by which this augmented reality, which existed in a computer form, a way to see and augment what you can see through a screen, providing something that is there, which is not physically there. And we developed a means by which that could then be worn on the body. And that was a huge step.
00:20:53
Speaker
And globally, I think that was probably the first step of wearing digital artefacts. We developed something using computer vision, computer science. We had masking, real-time digital environments to allow you to wear jewellery that hadn't been made. And that was the moment that we started to develop a company. We thought, hang on a minute, this is massive. In the future, why would you buy something unless you could try it on digitally?
00:21:21
Speaker
Why would you buy a handbag? Why would you buy a watch, an item, a jewellery in an online environment without seeing it first or trying it on first? And again, that has really had a huge legacy to what I've then gone on to do and develop. But those two moments really were the kind of technology pivot points.
00:21:42
Speaker
And I've just thoroughly enjoyed developing what has become Halition from that point. We grew it, secured investment. We're now still around the corner in Hatton Garden. Business now works across a whole host of jewellery, makeup, fashion, performance, art, spaces with technology. And that stemmed from that idea in that space that Birmingham City University, Jason Holt and Holt's and I developed.
00:22:08
Speaker
and it's been a really fascinating journey. Hellition has now existed commercially since 2008 and I grew the business working with the likes of De Beers and Bouchron and Forevermark in the States and Asia and we felt like magicians. We felt like magicians being able to
00:22:26
Speaker
create digital jewellery artefacts that you could try on online and really it was Dorothy's foresight to see that I had this stretch in how I'd started to look at technologies that enabled that to happen and it was quite an off-kilter thing to do. All of my other student colleagues went in slightly more different routes, there's nobody else
00:22:48
Speaker
was doing what I was doing. At the time we had to get people to sign confidentiality agreements to understand and see these technologies that we were developing. It was all very exciting. But it still comes back to jewellery though. It's a jewellery practice.
00:23:02
Speaker
And I guess after that, kind of standing that up and growing it for eight years, I started to ask more questions about what is a digital artifact? You know, culturally, what are we going to do with these digital things? And that's what drew me back into a slightly more academic space. I guess this kind of notion of making and materials is really evident in the digital
00:23:24
Speaker
making and digital materials. And I was really interested in experimenting with what that was. And so left an executive role at Halition into founding the Digital Anthropology Lab at London College of Fashion, University of the Arts. Because although we started in the jewellery industry, it was the fashion industry that really could see potential for virtual artefacts, virtual things,
00:23:47
Speaker
And I loved that period at LCF, really looking at examining what the potential of these digital layers that we were inhabiting could do. And again, it's the same practice, it's about experimenting, it's about materials, and it's about an ethnographic and anthropological exploration of
00:24:07
Speaker
Cultures of making and making things digitally is another material, but it's the same practice. And now I'm at University of Edinburgh, developing strategies around innovation, developing programmes and courses around digital technologies, emergent technologies and finding ways to connect these two. That's the story. As we managed to do with all of our work within the ECA, though, actually, I think we learned how to tell stories.
00:24:36
Speaker
It's interesting having that real grinding in hand-making from everything, from the actual jewellery to the sketchbooks and the drawing side of things, and then to be able to take that learning into being right at the forefront of digital technology. It seems to me that you really thrive and blossom in that environment of being in the unknown almost.
00:24:59
Speaker
I think it's quite interesting, exploring ways of making, whilst I was developing and building Hellition, I didn't make anything for 10 years. I didn't make a physical practice, I made a digital practice. And I didn't want to make a physical thing. I've now come back into that and have and are making physical things, but I think that that is a really interesting space, this kind of 3D printing gets to a certain space, but that digital pixel space is another area.
00:25:30
Speaker
I went to Bloomingdale's to present it and I was in a small room showing it to one or two colleagues and got so excited about it. I ended up standing on a table holding up my laptop so that they could get as many people into this tiny room as possible to see this magician, to see this magic. And so that time was so special. That was a very, very radical,
00:25:56
Speaker
emergent technology time but we always took it to commercial audiences and standing that up globally, new players have entered the market, we pioneered it, we worked with all of the top jewellery brands leading it and now I'm really pleased to see it just being used and adopted and you know it's other people's take on it and it almost becomes kind of normalised but seeing a virtual object move with you
00:26:27
Speaker
in real time was a very radical step forwards. Lorna, tell us about your experience after ECA and your journey to where you are now.
Lorna Watson's Work in India and Heritage Skill Preservation
00:26:38
Speaker
It's interesting because Lynn and I have touched on this. Actually, that's why I'm so shocked. It's four years or something since we actually spoke. I've been in almost like the opposite world and we've talked about
00:26:53
Speaker
the anthropological basis of what we both do, which is very, very interesting. I'll explain that as I talk. When I was graduating, it was becoming quite clear to me that I wasn't going to be a maker at the bench.
00:27:08
Speaker
It was very much about ideas generation for me. I was really curious about the enormous gap between creative education and the industry. And it was almost like, I remember this phrase, never the tween shall meet. They just didn't talk to one another. There was the industry and there was art school based education and they were just completely different worlds.
00:27:35
Speaker
And I was really intrigued by this. I've always had this intrigue about gaps and like spaces in between things, how certain things don't join together where I would see logically evolving, but they don't. And so, and now in retrospect, I see that that's also a common theme in a lot of areas of work for me throughout my career.
00:27:59
Speaker
But at that time, it wasn't as obvious. But I was frustrated and intrigued about this. So I was offered a postgraduate and that was the focus of that year for me was to explore how we could take this incredible design led education
00:28:19
Speaker
and apply it in more of a commercial context within the industry without it being destroyed or compromised beyond recognition. And I was really fortunate at that time to start to do some design work for a company at that time called Grant Walker. It was a design-led company and consultancy business in London who were working on some really big projects, one of which was with the World Gold Council.
00:28:48
Speaker
So I got involved in that. I started to do some freelance work with them that was relevant to my research and my thesis for my postgraduate. And as a result of that, when I finished my postgraduate, I went down to London to work with them and I was working with Grant Walker and the World Gold Council on
00:29:09
Speaker
these trend-led projects, and I used the word trend hesitantly because it wasn't just from a fashion perspective, but a lot of it was based on technical references, historical references, and evolving ideas that were applicable to a more commercial context. And as a result of that, I was invited
00:29:34
Speaker
who go to India, India being the world's largest consumer of gold. The World Gold Council project and I had the opportunity to go to India at that time what was supposed to be a two month design project to work with the World Gold Council
00:29:52
Speaker
and the very high level design universities in India, one of them being NIFT, NIFT in Ahmedabad, which had an extraordinary foundation, similarly to Edinburgh, in the technical foundation of applying their creativity. It was a collaboration between some of the universities and some of the leading manufacturers in jewellery.
00:30:18
Speaker
to look at ways for them to really evolve their language and their approach to developing collections because at that time a lot of it was very iterative and it was a kind of copycat mentality. And also as part of that was a focus around looking at traditional heritage skills in India, jewellery being, not only
00:30:41
Speaker
India being the largest consumer of gold, but also just the richness of jewelry references that originate from India. So I have found myself in this extraordinary project that was supposed to be for two months and that then led me to spend seven years there.
00:31:00
Speaker
I mean, if anyone had said to me, at 24 years old, you're going to India for seven years, I would have said, you've got to be joking. How is that possible when I don't see me spending the next seven years of my life doing that?
00:31:14
Speaker
But it just opened my eyes in a whole new way to the diversity of what was possible. And also at that time, what was extraordinary was that India was a developing country at that time and there was huge funding coming in from different parts of the world.
00:31:32
Speaker
They had technicians, really high-level specialist technicians coming in from Japan, from Switzerland, from all over the world and running intensive technical laboratories and workshops and craftsmen who specialized in ancient heritage skills.
00:31:53
Speaker
and collaborating. There were no boundaries. There was just this extraordinary, it was a period of time where it was very collaborative. Even the manufacturers, they were all in their early stages of building manufacturing businesses. So there was none of that sort of protectiveness and fear of sharing information. It was an absolutely extraordinary time. And I was really privileged to be in that environment. So I learned so much. It was a melting pot.
00:32:23
Speaker
ideas and sharing of knowledge and bringing the past into the future not to the extent the lens been involved in but just it literally tapped into everything that my curiosity was based around when I graduated thinking
00:32:39
Speaker
How on earth are these worlds so separate? There's got to be an opportunity for all of this to come together. And I found myself involved in that. So over the period of seven years, I worked with World Gold Council and I was also really heavily involved in a project that was through the Developing Countries Trade Agency.
00:33:00
Speaker
And it was bringing also different markets into that environment. So there were buyers coming from America, from Japan, from Germany, from France. And they all had different needs and requirements that were relevant to their specific market.
00:33:17
Speaker
So not only were we looking at ways to evolve heritage in a way that was relevant to a contemporary marketplace, but also being able to adopt it in a more commercial context through manufacturing without compromising massively the skills and the creativity and the knowledge and the heritage. That was my main focus of attention to begin with.
00:33:45
Speaker
But then over the period of that time, we then had buyers coming in from all over the world who were really excited to be able to apply their specific needs to that context and that type of environment. I oversaw a lot of these different branches of that development, which was absolutely amazing, and just built this extraordinary network of creatives, heritage crafts people, buyers,
00:34:14
Speaker
brands, department stores, independent retailers, manufacturers who specialized in lots of different areas and fields that could then be applied.
00:34:25
Speaker
depending on the context of the project or I oversaw that and was involved in that and also through training in the universities. So graduates at the universities became the next generation of designers who then began to work in the manufacturing environment and they then became the conduits to all of this work that we had been developing over those years.
00:34:48
Speaker
So after seven years, I saw this opportunity, the next stage of opportunity, which was where buyers were coming in and they wanted specific collections developed. It was specific to their market. And so we had a network of manufacturers, network within the manufacturers and
00:35:08
Speaker
very, very highly skilled caregivers or craftspeople. And then we had this network of industry buyers that wanted specific things that were relevant to their marketplace. And so again, there was this gap in knowledge and the marketplace. And I started a design studio in London to manage that process and connect the buyers, the creatives, the designers, the makers and the manufacturers
00:35:37
Speaker
and oversee it all the way through to the end product that then went into production. I ran my studio in London for about 11 years and that then expanded to manufacturing in different parts of the world. So I also worked in the Philippines, I worked in Thailand. We then started to look at really innovative ways of stone cutting.
00:36:02
Speaker
stone carving, specialization in different areas of evolving certain heritage skills in a way that made them more accessible and more relevant to manufacturing on a greater scale. That was really the basis of my postgraduate research and it was incredible how I ended up in the
00:36:23
Speaker
playground that fed that curiosity and investigation and involved at that time just perfect. It just felt like the perfect timing. I was in the perfect place at the perfect time.
00:36:36
Speaker
where I had the opportunity to tap into these different fields of knowledge and wisdom that were collaborating. That was really my main focus and my main evolution in my career to a point where I then felt like there was a bit of a ceiling for me because I'd been working very much in steering other people's needs and demands. But for myself, I felt like I reached a bit of a ceiling.
00:37:02
Speaker
And I really wasn't sure what to do with that. I had my own business. I was managing a lot rather than really tapping into my creativity. So that was an area that Dorisie, again, she was an incredible guide for me in that area. And I think it probably applies to a lot of us, even though we're fortunate enough to have had this background of investigating and exploring in a non-boundary environment.
00:37:31
Speaker
But there's still a fear there once you've reached a certain stage of evolution, you find yourself in a certain environment that's familiar to you, but it's not necessarily comfortable anymore. In fact, it's almost become too comfortable that I really wanted to throw myself into the next stage of my career and I didn't know what that was going to be.
00:37:51
Speaker
I had responsibilities for a team and actually Jason, I've got to know Jason Paul around that time, who was also an incredible mentor for me at that time. And really, I would say him and Dorothy, they were my two real mentors to encourage me to break out of that comfort zone. I also thought I was completely unemployable. I had not been employed since I left university. I'd worked on
00:38:20
Speaker
a freelance basis or a contract basis or a project basis. But at that time, I had not been employed once. So it never occurred to me that I would be employable.
00:38:32
Speaker
One of our customers at that time that we were doing some research for actually approached me and asked me if I would be interested to join them. It was to coordinate a really large scale design research project. And the company was actually Faberge. Faberge had been bought the historical brand Faberge.
00:38:53
Speaker
had been bought by a gemstone mining factory. And the intention was to bring the brand back to life through colored gemstones and to really look at what Karl Fabergé, again, an innovator, extraordinary innovator in his time, what would Karl Fabergé be doing today, which was just, again, so relevant to the evolution of my career to that point. So I was really excited about that, terrified
00:39:23
Speaker
at the thought of joining a business full time. But with Dorothy and Jason's encouragement, I decided to do that. And I joined them and just found myself on this extraordinary journey of going to Russia, being the only person in the Fabergé rooms, in the Kremlin, and literally being presented with all of these absolute gems of history.
00:39:51
Speaker
I have to say I wasn't a fan of Faberge. I really wasn't. It was something I actually thought was garish for me. It didn't align necessarily with my sensibilities and the aesthetic that I had cultivated over the years. But when I found myself in a room with these
00:40:11
Speaker
extraordinary artifacts. And I saw the quality of making. For example, there was a cigarette case. It was so beautiful and actually really contemporary design. And the curator at the Kremlin took it in front of my eyes and submerged it in a bowl of water and then took it out and dried it and deftly opened it and there was not a drop of water inside it. That was an extraordinary time for me to really
00:40:40
Speaker
sort of go back into the world of high level, extraordinary high level craftsmanship, but also that had this narrative when you touched on this storytelling element and everything that Carl Faberge did was a story. They were private commissions. They were designed and created as memory markers, as
00:41:03
Speaker
a means to telling a story of the person who commissioned the work. I just found myself really captivated by that. So my time at Fabergé, it was a very interesting time, full of challenges. There were a lot of bureaucratic challenges and a lot of other complications. But I have to say that that particular time, it really propelled me into the next stage of my career.
00:41:32
Speaker
I worked on that project for a year and a half and interestingly the CEO at that time was a gentleman called Mark Dunhill from the Dunhill family who's now my CEO. So Mark and I connected at that time and you know just having this appreciation mutual appreciation for the history of the brand
00:41:54
Speaker
but also having this real eagerness to somehow find ways to bring it to relevance today. Unfortunately, the project hit a number of setbacks. We'd never really come to fruition in that way, but it's so deceived for me that was really important as a step to what I'm doing now.
Founding a Purpose-Led Business in Bali
00:42:16
Speaker
And I think that it's extraordinary to look back on these different areas of my career path, living and working in India,
00:42:24
Speaker
I ran a number of projects through the British Council in Sudan. I worked in Egypt, I worked in Japan, and they were all focused around heritage skills that were somehow losing their cultural value or their perceived value. They were skills that were disappearing. Generations of craftsmen, the generations of knowledge was not being passed down. And so there was this gap, this real fear of losing this knowledge.
00:42:54
Speaker
and looking at ways to make them relevant or to them relevant to today's international marketplace or an appreciation for those skills with fresh eyes. That was a recurring theme through my time in India, the other projects that I ran, the design studio that I ran in London for 11 years.
00:43:14
Speaker
My time at Fabergé, all of which led me to a business that I now run, which again happened kind of coincidentally, I think. I started to come to Bali 20 years ago. I started practicing yoga when I lived in India for many, many years.
00:43:32
Speaker
And through yoga, I came to Bali on holiday and to develop my practice more deeply. And when I first arrived here 20 years ago, there was just this prolific creativity everywhere you turned. There was
00:43:48
Speaker
prolific creativity and there's a belief that Bali was blessed so abundantly by the spirits and the gods that everything just grew abundantly everywhere you turn there was everything that was required for Balinese to sustain themselves everything was growing naturally and there was an abundance
00:44:09
Speaker
It meant that many people had a lot of time. So the belief is that that's how they cultivated such high level creativity that attracted so many artists and philosophers and anthropologists from the thirties and forties all the way through. So when I first arrived here, it was just mind blowing to see the wealth of different skills, the richness of different skills and the quality of making was absolutely extraordinary.
00:44:38
Speaker
So that also meant that was a big attraction for me to return almost every year, actually, I would come for a period of time to practice yoga and to do a deep dive into the creative and cultural aspect of Bali. And over the period of about 10 or 11 years, I experienced firsthand this enormous decline in those high level skills and
00:45:04
Speaker
Simultaneously, I was still working. At that point, I was creative director for a brand in London. I'd moved on from Fabergé, creative director for a jewellery brand. I wanted to actually spend more time in Bali and I thought, well, what better way to do that than to maybe start a project here for the brand? So I could spend a bit more time here and I could do an even deeper dive into jewellery world.
00:45:27
Speaker
And I could not get that project off the ground. I just couldn't make it happen. This was contrary to all these other enormous projects or tiny projects that I'd curated or ran in different parts of the world. And for some reason in Bali I just couldn't get this off the ground. So I became even more intrigued.
00:45:50
Speaker
and over a period of time I was introduced to different indigenous communities, artisans, in some cases seventh generation artisans here. I got to really do a deep dive into the story of the challenges that they were facing and the decline that was happening here and what the reasons for that were. One of my most significant experiences was meeting a family in East Bali. They're a family of master weavers for us
00:46:20
Speaker
and they were basket weavers. They worked with this material. It's a vine that's indigenous to the foothills of East Bali, and it grows naturally on their land, prolifically, abundantly, and it regenerates itself. I saw these exquisite, tiny baskets that they were making for ceremonies here over a period of many, many years, and the finesse of it. And I asked Yann, the head of the family, to talk me through the process.
00:46:49
Speaker
And to talk me through the challenges that had meant that these skills were declining and it was so difficult to manage projects, whether it was jewellery or basket weaving or any other creative project in Bali, the challenges were really the same. And he explained to me, because of mass productions, many of the things that we're now much more aware of because of
00:47:11
Speaker
mass production in neighboring territories, they were copycatting some of the techniques and making them faster, cheaper, and then driving the artisans, traditional artisans, to make these enormous compromises in the skills that they had inherited from their lineage of ancestors. And therefore it was very difficult for them to make any kind of sustainable livelihood for them and their families.
00:47:41
Speaker
And this was why the scales were declining in many, many different areas, jewelry being one of them.
00:47:47
Speaker
But what was fascinating for me, probably wondering why I'm discussing this basket weaving in comparison to a jewelry project, but he sat there and he showed me the process of cultivating this vine. And so they would harvest it and then they would take the vine and strip the leaves off it. And then they would split the vine into different thicknesses using a fingernail. But the vine was still green and ripe and soft.
00:48:16
Speaker
And then it would go through a process of drying for a number of weeks. And at that point, they would file the end of it. They would make a hole in a metal plate and they would pull the vine through the hole in the metal plate to make it a particular size that they would then use.
00:48:36
Speaker
and I was, that was it, I was just completely in at that stage to see them using a jewelry making technique of what we would do to size metal wire and they were applying exactly the same technique to a natural plant fiber
00:48:56
Speaker
that has the most extraordinary natural intelligence. This plant fiber becomes as tensile as steel. It's water resistant. It will last for 50 years plus if it's cared for after it's woven and it dries out naturally. And I was just absolutely blown away by materiality, all the things that we learned to study and really understand and work with when we were at ECA under Dorothy. And so
00:49:26
Speaker
That was what led me to find my business, which is really tapping into the indigenous wisdom and looking at ways to recognize that I think sustainability is in many ways embedded in history and indigenous knowledge and that there are ways for us to cultivate that and make it relevant and keep it relevant to today's requirements and industry.
00:49:52
Speaker
The other thing that's very important about this that I want to add is as part of that process, when I was really looking at where is the real narrative and the real message. And for me, it was about bringing the people and skills behind the making of a product back to the forefront. The value of a product had become distorted in the industry and in the marketplace where
00:50:19
Speaker
the majority of, certainly in the luxury industry, the value was really attached to the name that was on the product. It wasn't about the true value that luxury was founded in, which was the people, the skills, the narrative, the history, the storytelling, the emotional connection, all of which I was experiencing firsthand here.
00:50:43
Speaker
And so that led me to really question, okay, this isn't just about finding ways to keep these skills relevant and to work collaboratively to reimagine these in the context of a larger audience.
00:51:00
Speaker
But how do we bring the people and skills to the forefront of that? And as a result of that, I find that the concept of a digital code, everything that each artisan creates comes with a unique code. The finished product has that code on it. So when the customer buys it and they put the code into our website, it tracks them back.
00:51:21
Speaker
to the actual press person who made it and the story and the lineage of their skills and how it's evolved and what it means for them now to still be involved in the skills in a different context. And what that does is also reinstate this very high level perceived value of the skills, which had become really rock bottom for them, because if you can't earn a livelihood from your skill,
00:51:49
Speaker
that your perception of it is kind of non-existent, actually. And that's one of the most significant impacts for these artisans. And it meant that they were having to leave their communities and go and look for work on construction sites or other means of labor to support them and their families. So it was also very important for me to look at ways to support these communities, to stay in community. We make in communities. We don't make in factories.
00:52:18
Speaker
still works within villages that their craft originates from and every single product is tracked back in some cases to the plant fibers that are grown on the land of the artisans. So it's field to end product traceability story now.
00:52:36
Speaker
And we're really looking at some very high level positive impact initiatives within communities around not just the weaving skills, but also around other areas like agriculture, cultural sustainability.
00:52:51
Speaker
Lynn and I touched on this and I'm desperate to get some more time with you now, Lynn, because that's evolved to such a greater extent now. And there is a really strong anthropological thread to all of that as well. And so we're now looking at other ways to really evolve this digital code. We're at a very interesting stage in our business where we've got lots of ideas on how to take that into the next stage of a digital experience for our customer and for our artisans.
00:53:21
Speaker
Amazing. Thank you, Lorna. Reflecting again now on that very special time in jewellery education, is there anything else you'd like to share about Dorothy and the cohorts of alumni? One of Dorothy's inherent skills was
00:53:38
Speaker
connecting people. And when you touched on this as well, like she always knew about things that were happening, like little seeds of magic. And she had this ability to connect people at just the right time. I don't think she had any idea where those connections would lead, but it was like a spark. It felt like she just knew how to connect at just the right time. And those sparks of ideas or
00:54:09
Speaker
parallel experiences would take shape. And I think for me, with Nicola in particular, I mean we rarely actually even met one another over the period of 25 years, but we
00:54:23
Speaker
always kind of knew what each other was doing and at times we would talk to one another or Dorothy would say you've got to talk to Nicola or Nicola you've got to talk to Lorna and and we would come together and we'd have a quick conversation on email you know then we would go off and do what we were doing again and I think she had this inherent intuition of just knowing or seeing where opportunities were to connect people whether it was
00:54:51
Speaker
new people within the industry or our peer group at ECA, she always had this ability to connect and reconnect again. I think that's something you mentioned, Lauren, that you make in communities, not factories. I think that kind of idea of that jewellery space at ECA was a community.
Reflections on ECA Community and Entrepreneurial Spirit
00:55:12
Speaker
And that goes forwards and backwards through time and various points. That's a hugely valuable network, actually, that kind of extension space, that community that's been developed. Yeah, it's like one of the most enriched databases that you could ever wish for, isn't it? Really, when you think about the extent of the skills and the creativity and all the different areas that we've collectively
00:55:42
Speaker
become involved in, it's an incredible database. It's been so incredibly inspiring listening to these stories and I think about graduates now, especially those that were studying during the COVID-19 pandemic and what a knock that had on confidence due to workshop access and everything else that was going on at the time. Throughout these interviews, we've heard wonderful opportunities that provided such pivotal experiences
00:56:12
Speaker
At 23, 24 years old, working on projects around the world, how do you think the course prepared you to feel confident going into these new environments and taking these next steps in your careers? Dorothy always had a kind of saying, a kind of modest, almost a rhetorical saying that, oh, who am I? I'm just Dorothy from Edinburgh. You know, it's kind of like, but I have access to the world.
00:56:39
Speaker
That was really fostered, be strong in who you are. And that was kind of quite often repeated, I believe, in terms of just use your voice and go out there. And I think that kind of openness to possibility and kind of change making practice
00:56:57
Speaker
that kind of fostering a confidence that I certainly felt I had moving into new things and new possibilities and new territories and challenging the status quo of whatever those were. I think that was kind of almost part of the learning to fail risk taking with materials kind of space that we inhabited. I really agree, completely agree with that. And I think because it was an environment that encouraged the unknown
00:57:28
Speaker
from the beginning, there was an unexpected outcome and we were encouraged to just explore the idea, explore the material, explore and see how it would evolve. So therefore I think that prepared us to go into some, there wasn't an expected outcome per se. There was a level of confidence. I don't think I was particularly confident when I graduated, but I think there was a level of
00:57:57
Speaker
skill sets that prepared us to go into an environment like that and just see where it led us. And even though I touched on reaching a certain point in my career where I was a little bit afraid, what's the next thing? I still had those tools, the transferable skills that you knew you could take with you and just explore what presented itself and allow it to
00:58:24
Speaker
evolve and lead you in a way and then also to have the ability coming back to the ability to distill information and let it lead you to something else. Certainly from my perspective and I think I can see that in a number of other peers. I think that just prepared us really well for the paths that we've been on and continue to be on. I really like that kind of entrepreneurial space, I guess.
00:58:53
Speaker
moved into, you know, that opens up capacity for creating new things and being your own vision setter as much as, you know, setting and launching a collection or making it a more traditional sense. And I think that entrepreneurial spirit is something or an entrepreneurial mindset links into our previous discussion about that kind of space of confidence and space of possibility.
00:59:17
Speaker
and I really love that you know you were developing spaces in Fabergé and I think at that particular time we were also having similar similar chats with you and your other roles certainly connecting in and out of these kind of spaces that we are creating I think has been a really lovely thing to be part of as you said earlier the kind of journeys of each of these threads of
00:59:45
Speaker
Dorothy graduates, if you like, you know, this extended community and kind of saying, oh, you're working with Dunhill, but we created a holographic catwalk show in Shanghai for Dunhill, you know, working with that brand that you were working with in London. We were also developing conversations. And these things, whilst everybody is doing different particular aspects, I think it's just been so enriching, seeing how and in what way they can kind of interact.
01:00:14
Speaker
And I know our previous conversations, that kind of anthropological space, I think that is something that I sought to develop, certainly with the Digital Anthropology Lab, but I think we were unknowing creators of anthropological practice. And I think that that's a really interesting space, certainly in jewellery, to start to kind of unlock and explore, because the stories we tell
01:00:40
Speaker
our stories of our cultures and communities and that kind of memory markers that you described and I think on reflection as a jewellery practitioner that is probably one of a really strong fundamental areas that I don't think we talked about or knew about or learned about at the time but it is what we do. A kind of notion of material culture and now going such
01:01:05
Speaker
in depth into different forms of material culture, you and in the woven and indigenous landscapes in Bali and myself in computer science and kind of linking that into a more physical environment of robotics even, you know, what are materials, what is adornment in those types of contexts, I think is a really elastic position that we are able to kind of comfortably and confidently exist in.
01:01:33
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, just as you're saying that, I'm thinking of a number of people in our peer group, artists and creatives in our peer group, and just thinking of the extent again, of the wealth of different fields and different levels of experience and knowledge. But there is this thread and commonality of
01:01:56
Speaker
storytelling, whether it's a visual communication, whether it's a materiality, whether it's a technology or a certain skill, or there is that very, very strong thread of
01:02:12
Speaker
storytelling and communicating and recognizing the connectivity, even in the finest detail of what we're doing. And I think that's something, it's just jewel-like. It's what we were taught from the very beginning at ECA under Dorothy and in my case under Bill and Susan. It was looking at the jewel-like qualities that connected everything. And I think that's preciousness of things also being able to really recognize
01:02:42
Speaker
where the true value in something lies that's not monetary. But also keeping it in the human. I remember one of the last messages I got from Dorothy was a handwritten postcard to my desk at London College of Fashion beyond all the tech, you know, handwritten postcard, you know, that kind of sense of time in itself.
01:03:07
Speaker
And our place in time, I think, was really an interesting thing to dwell on, really, that there isn't a future material practice, there is just practice. You know, you may be operating in this area or you may be operating in that area, but actually it is all the same.
01:03:23
Speaker
That's a really significant point to make, the human connection, the community again coming back to that. When I think of Dorothy, this incredible humility, she was always just so grounded. So no matter what was going on, she always had this ability to just ground back to like the most important value chain of what we were working in. And I think that still really stands for me as well.
01:03:51
Speaker
Thank you so much, Lorna, for joining us from across the world and to both of you for taking part in this podcast. It's been fascinating. List note, there is more information about Lorna and Lynne on the Scottish Goldsmiths Trust website, as well as images and links.